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Authorities Block Flights Into Eastern Ukraine In Ukraine Conflict, Presidential Election Takes Center Stage
(about 5 hours later)
KIEV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian authorities apparently blocked all international flights into the embattled eastern region of the country on Tuesday, as the interior minister said that four government soldiers and perhaps more than 30 pro-Russian rebels had been killed in clashes the previous day near the city of Slovyansk. KIEV, Ukraine — Russia and the West maneuvered on Tuesday ahead of a seemingly inevitable clash over Ukraine’s plan to hold a presidential election on May 25 that Western powers view as crucial to restoring stability and that the Kremlin says will be illegitimate, particularly if the government in Kiev cannot first stabilize the country.
The authorities also canceled at least 20 flights from Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine’s largest city, and Donetsk, a regional capital, as they girded for violence ahead of a holiday on Friday commemorating victory in World War II. By midafternoon, all air traffic within Ukraine appeared to have ceased. Senior Russian officials have repeatedly referred to the provisional government in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, as an illegitimate “junta.” From their perspective, allowing an election to go forward when no pro-Russian candidate has a real chance of winning would seriously weaken the Kremlin’s influence in Ukraine. It could also help the West coax the country out of Moscow’s orbit.
On Monday, Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, said that vehicle checkpoints had been established at strategic points around the capital of Kiev as a precaution against attacks. Russia has made clear that it would like the election to be delayed. The country’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, pressed the point again on Tuesday, insisting that the interim government end bloodshed and amend the Constitution to devolve power to the regions — and that it do so before Ukrainians are asked to choose a new leader.
In a posting on Facebook, the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, accused the pro-Russian separatists of using civilians as human shields. “The Ukrainian military can’t fire on civilians,” Mr. Avakov said. “That is how they are restricted. And this restriction is used by our enemies. The enemy hides behind people and fires from there.” Such changes would presumably address the demands by some pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine for a new system of federalization that would weaken the central government and expand the authority of regional and local officials.
The developments coincided with mounting Western concern that the fighting in the east could spiral out of control and lead to direct intervention by Russia, which has deployed tens of thousands of troops on its side of the border, supposedly for training exercises. “Holding elections in a situation where the armed forces are being used against part of the population is rather unusual,” Mr. Lavrov said on Tuesday at a news conference in Vienna, where about 30 foreign ministers met under the auspices of the Council of Europe to discuss the situation in Ukraine.
In a television interview in Paris, President François Hollande of France said that if an election planned by the Kiev authorities for May 25 was not held, “there would be chaos and the risk of civil war.” “The criteria of any process involving citizen choice are well known to all,” Mr. Lavrov said, according to the Interfax news service. “Elections and referendums must be free and fair, and they must proceed in a situation excluding violence and under objective and unbiased international monitoring.”
In Vienna, around 30 foreign ministers — including those of Ukraine and Russia — were meeting on Tuesday under the auspices of the Council of Europe to debate the crisis. He added, “Depending on how all of these criteria will be observed, we will shape our attitude to these events.”
The British foreign secretary, William Hague, suggested at the meeting that Russia is feeding the conflict in Ukraine to undermine the presidential election scheduled for May 25. He told reporters, according to The Associated Press, “Russia is clearly intent on preventing or disrupting those elections.” He said that the foreign ministers at the meeting supported holding the vote without any outside interference. At the Vienna meeting, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, said that Russian worries about violence and the elections were disingenuous as the Kremlin was feeding the conflict in Ukraine to undermine the presidential election. “Russia is clearly intent on preventing or disrupting those elections,” he told reporters, according to The Associated Press. He added that the foreign ministers at the meeting supported holding the vote without outside interference.
But Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said at the same meeting that it would be “unusual” to hold a presidential election in Ukraine while the government was using military force across a broad region of the country, according to Reuters. Further complicating the issue, the Ukrainian Parliament decided on Tuesday not to hold a national referendum at the same time as the presidential election. Some leaders in eastern Ukraine who support the provisional government had proposed holding the two the same day to help defuse social and political tensions in the country.
Late on Monday, the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin toughened its travel advisory for Ukraine, recommending that German citizens leave eastern and southern Ukraine. On Sunday, the ministry was strongly advising Germans against entering those areas. The Parliament vote to delay the referendum, with some lawmakers citing security concerns, seemed certain to reinforce Russia’s contention that the unsettled circumstances would not allow for a legitimate presidential election.
Journalists were expressly warned against traveling to the south and east. “In the light of the most recent developments one must assume that media representatives run a particular risk of being blocked or detained by separatist forces,” the Foreign Ministry said. At a news conference after the special closed session of Parliament, Andriy V. Senchenko, a member of the Fatherland party, said that a referendum could not be held amid the current violence.
Germany spent last week working for the release of four military observers who were captured by pro-Russian militants in Slovyansk. The four men and the other seven people held with their German-led military observer team were freed over the weekend, and Germany has since said it would not send more military observers to Ukraine. “Any referendum should take place when there is a guarantee that the will of the people is not expressed at gunpoint,” Mr. Senchenko said, according to Ukrainian news services.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier suggested in a television interview late Monday that events were now beyond the control of the authorities in Kiev and Moscow. Mr. Senchenko struggled, however, to explain why the presidential vote could still proceed. He said that while the national result in the presidential election would yield an indisputable victor, a referendum could result in different outcomes in different regions.
“If we have a referendum in that manner, its results can be used for political manipulations by separatists and their coordinators from special intelligence services from the Russian Federation,” Mr. Senchenko said.
Ukraine’s interior minister said Tuesday that four government soldiers and about 30 pro-Russian rebels had been killed in clashes a day earlier near the city of Slovyansk. Rebels also forced down a Ukrainian Mi24 helicopter, which was later destroyed, in the town of Krasny Liman, near Slovyansk.
Local residents said the pilots landed because one was wounded by ground fire. Another helicopter evacuated them and a third aircraft, described by witnesses as an attack jet, destroyed the helicopter so that it could not be used by rebels. The husk of the aircraft, with one rotor still attached, was sitting in a shallow swamp on Tuesday and local men were scavenging for scrap.
The rising debate over the presidential election came as officials in Kiev seemed to be girding for violence ahead of a holiday on Friday commemorating victory in World War II.
On Monday, the acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, said that checkpoints had been established at strategic points around the capital to guard against potential attacks.
While the central government convened a meeting of regional officials on Tuesday to discuss a “decentralization” plan, which is viewed as a potential political solution to the continuing separatist violence, the deputy prime minister in charge of drawing up the proposal also conceded that it would not be ready before the presidential election.
The “decentralization” plan is Kiev’s answer to the demand by some pro-Russian separatists for “federalization.” In what is largely a war over a single word, both plans call for increasing the authority of regional and local governments.
At the meeting of regional leaders on Tuesday in Kiev, officials said that the plan would give local governments substantially more authority over several areas of government services including education, health, sports, culture and road construction.
The developments coincided with mounting Western concern that fighting in eastern Ukraine could spiral out of control and lead to direct intervention by Russia, which has deployed tens of thousands of troops on its side of the border, supposedly for training exercises.
Late on Monday, the German Foreign Ministry toughened its travel advisory for Ukraine, recommending that German citizens leave eastern and southern Ukraine. On Sunday, the ministry strongly advised Germans against entering those areas.
In a television interview in Paris, President François Hollande of France said that if the May 25 election was not held, “there would be chaos and the risk of civil war.”
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany suggested in a television interview late Monday that events were now beyond the control of the authorities in Kiev or Moscow.
“I’m convinced that we are struggling against a situation that has taken on a dynamic of its own,” Mr. Steinmeier said. “There are groups in eastern Ukraine that are not listening” to the central governments in Ukraine and Russia, he said.“I’m convinced that we are struggling against a situation that has taken on a dynamic of its own,” Mr. Steinmeier said. “There are groups in eastern Ukraine that are not listening” to the central governments in Ukraine and Russia, he said.
In a separate interview with four European newspapers, Mr. Steinmeier said recent violence in the Ukrainian city of Odessa had “shown us that we are just a few steps away from a military confrontation.” Conflict has reached a point that “a short time ago we would have considered impossible,” he added.In a separate interview with four European newspapers, Mr. Steinmeier said recent violence in the Ukrainian city of Odessa had “shown us that we are just a few steps away from a military confrontation.” Conflict has reached a point that “a short time ago we would have considered impossible,” he added.
Navi Pillay, the top United Nations human rights official, also sounded the alarm, urging “all sides to make a much greater effort to find a peaceful resolution to the current crisis, especially in the various towns in eastern and southern Ukraine that have been racked by increasingly violent confrontations.”
“Armed opposition groups must stop all illegal actions, including detaining people and seizing public buildings in violation of Ukraine’s laws and Constitution,” she said in a statement. “These organized and well-armed groups should lay down their weapons, free arbitrarily detained persons, and vacate occupied public and administrative buildings.” .